NBA Seeks Prediction Market Data and Federal Oversight to Guard Integrity

The National Basketball Association wants direct access to trading data from prediction market platforms to monitor for insider trading and protect competition integrity, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told CNBC's Contessa Brewer on Friday in an interview on "Squawk Box."

"Whether it's called a prediction market, whether it's sports betting, it's the same issues for our league and I think for all the leagues, there's issues around integrity first and foremost," Silver told CNBC Business. "We want access to that data. We also want control of the market." Silver characterized contracts tied to whether a coach will be fired as "odd behavior."

The commissioner's remarks follow a legal filing by the National Football League, which submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday supporting New Jersey regulators. The NFL argued that sports-related contracts on prediction markets constitute gambling rather than financial swaps, which fall under the federal jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The NFL's brief highlighted manipulation risks around contracts tracking player injuries or individual performances and advocated for a minimum trader age of 21.

While Silver agreed with the 21-year-old age restriction, he broke with the NFL by endorsing federal oversight for prediction exchanges rather than fragmented state-by-state regulation. Silver noted that the NBA currently deals with roughly 40 different regulatory jurisdictions and argued that a single national policy would serve the league's interests better.

The push from major sports leagues arrives amid surging trading volumes for football contracts following the start of the NFL season. While several courts have previously favored state oversight of prediction exchanges over the CFTC, the sector secured a legal victory last week in Illinois, where a court halted the state from applying local gambling laws to event contracts on Kalshi and Coinbase. Following that decision, Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara called the ruling "beautiful" on social media.

According to CNBC Business's report, CNBC and Kalshi maintain a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.